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The alliance between politics and philosophy pursues the object to change the world as public or social life. The life implies various degrees of quality, and suggests existence regarded as a desirable condition: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the main point of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). We have here a whole philosophy of politics referring to Plato's doctrine of the practical influence of philosophy on the state power to change the world (Plato, 1971, Rp. V 473d, VI 501e, VII 540d). The philosophy of politics holds life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be unalienable rights and just so lays down the basic human rights as the principles of the political law, public law. The form of government which secures these rights is called democracy. America is no longer the ruler of her own spirit. In Armenia and Russia, there is instituted now timocracy, a form of government in which love of honor is the ruling principle (timē honor + krateein to rule). There exist here public law apart from human rights. The task of the philosophy of politics is to secure democracy in the United States of America and to carry out the transition from timocracy to democracy in the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation.

The current mode of life in Russia combines the features of desperately daring steps in geopolitical domain with an amazing shyness of thought when facing the tiniest changes in theoretical constructs. Today, crowds of laymen, officials and many "learned" dignitaries in the West and in the East face the need to reject the prejudices concocted using dirty data techniques. The time has come to release Stalin from the Nazi captivity and to reinstate his Membership within the Great Triplett of Roosevelt Stalin Churchill. The call for serious changes in the theoretical constructs has become a vital demand for the survival of mankind. Both the West and Russia have to act urgently. Periculum in mora. As of today, having been brought to bay, the correct estimation of the genuinely large merits by Stalin before Motherland and Humanity is popping up irresistibly, as if it were a moth piercing through the pupa, dumping as a useless shell the prejudices like "Stalin equals Hitler". This concerns primarily the evolution of the shy Stalinism by Putin. The time has come to update the judgments on Stalin at the governmental level. The bigotry by Brzezinski is to be terminated. The Destiny of Russia is at stake.

At present there exist three forms of government: republic (representing two types – democratic and socialist), monarchy and timocracy (timē honor + krateein to rule). In timocracy ambition for power and glory motivates the rulers and although possession of property is not necessary qualification for holders of offices, love of honor is supported by illegal greedy accumulation of wealth. Rulers are here warriors suited with the name "enemies of man" (Martin Luther). The collapse of the USSR led to the rise of a heap of timocratic states. To talk about these states with precision and understanding, it is necessary to have new names. The fascist terms "authoritarianism" and "totalitarianism" that lead us into error since the Cold War are out of place here.

AbstractThis article analyses the implications of the recently observed sharp expansion of foreign banks in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) as measured by equity ownership. We show that the mode of foreign entry has a pivotal impact on the post‐entry performance of banks in CEECs. Foreign greenfield banks are characterized by superior cost efficiency, compared with domestic and foreign‐acquired banks. The efficiency of foreign‐acquired banks deteriorates in the initial year of acquisition, but improves thereafter. Banks acquired by foreigners have less market power relative to domestic and foreign greenfield banks. Overall, the CEEC banking sectors have benefited from the increased foreign bank participation, both in terms of higher efficiency and more competition.

We analyze determinants of sovereign bond yields in 22 advanced economies over the 1980-2010 period using panel cointegration techniques. The application of cointegration methodology allows distinguishing between long-run (debt-to-GDP ratio, potential growth) and short-run (inflation, short-term interest rates, etc.) determinants of sovereign borrowing costs. We find that in the long-run, government bond yields increase by about 2 basis points in response to a 1 percentage point increase in government debt-to-GDP ratio and by about 45 basis points in response to a 1 percentage point increase in potential growth rate. In the short-run, sovereign bond yields deviate from the level determined by the long-run fundamentals, but about half of the deviation adjusts in one year. When considering the impact of the global financial crisis on sovereign borrowing costs in euro area countries, the estimations suggest that spreads against Germany in some European periphery countries exceeded the level determined by fundamentals in the aftermath of the crisis, while some North European countries have benefited from "safe haven" flows.

This paper quantifies the variability of tax elasticities in Lithuania using two alternative methods: rolling regressions and pooled mean group estimator. The analysis is motivated by the systematic variation of tax revenues observed over the economic cycle in the recent past. Both methods confirm that tax elasticities moved with the cycle, which can be attributed to the procyclical tax compliance tendencies and structural composition effects across tax bases. Comparison of VAT revenue gaps across Baltic countries during the recent recovery suggests that tax revenues rebounded fastest in Eston

This article analyzes the main results of a representative nationwide sociological survey devoted to the study of the distinctive characteristics of the national identity of modern Armenian society. Based on a theoretical analysis of the obtained data and a comparative study of secondary data obtained in earlier sociological studies, the dynamic image of the main characteristics of the national identity of modern Armenians is constructed. The main gender, age and urban differences in the national self-identification of the population of Armenia are provided. Sociological analysis of the self-perception of Armenians in relation to other ethnic groups of a large historical region is given. The outlines of social distance within the Armenian ethnos between various groups of its diaspora are considered in detail. Some of the sociological data obtained is compared to the results of recent genetic studies of the Armenian ethnos.

While the majority of Armenian scholars are convinced the status of Nagorno-Karabakh should be based on the implementation of the right of self-determination, very little attention has been paid to the issue of the legitimacy of the pre-war borders of the Republic of Artsakh. Roughly, it is possible to divide the positions of the Armenian expert community into those who believed some or most of the seven districts will be ceded to Azerbaijan as a result of negotiations and those who deemed any attempt to change the pre-war status-quo as either dangerous, strategically flawed, unnecessary, groundless or downright betrayal of national interests and the century-long struggle for the integrity of Artsakh and Armenia. However, the evolution of the state of the de-facto Republic of Artsakh in the context of the legitimacy of its pre-war borders has received scant, if any, academic attention. It is this side of the matter that we attempt to address in this article through the lens of territoriality and the critical review of the so-called Madrid Principles.

Despite the worldwide standstill brought by the COVID–19 pandemic, conflict resolutions remain among the key priorities of the international community. This is true for the Nagorno Karabakh conflict too. Without going deep into history it's worthy to recall the key milestones of the conflict. The Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region declared its intention to leave Soviet Azerbaijan and join Soviet Armenia in February 1988. In the final days of the Soviet Union, Nagorno Karabakh organized a referendum and declared its independence. Almost immediately Azerbaijan launched a military attack against Nagorno Karabakh seeking to crash the newly established republic. The hostilities came to an end in May 1994 and since then the negotiations have been launched under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group with Russia, the US, and France as Co-chairs. The mediators have put forward several proposals including the so-called"Madrid Document"which was submitted in late 2007. Since then several modifications of that plan have been discussed, including the Kazan document of June 2011 and the"Lavrov Plan"of 2014 and 2016. In their March and December, 2019 statements OSCE Minsk group Co-chairs again reiterated that any solution should be based on those ideas.

Book Review: "Turkey's Relations with the Middle East: Political Encounters after the Arab Spring"